


it is not so dreadful

by Barrhorn



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Gen, Late Night Conversations, Post-Talon Widowmaker | Amélie Lacroix, implied Pharmercy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-21
Updated: 2017-10-21
Packaged: 2019-01-20 12:50:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,410
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12433218
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Barrhorn/pseuds/Barrhorn
Summary: One night, Widow goes to talk to Angela, but finds Fareeha instead.(Or: Fareeha doesn't trust Widow's attempt at redemption, and Widow doesn't blame her.)





	it is not so dreadful

**Author's Note:**

> A long time ago I thought about doing a Widowmaker redemption arc, but other people have done it a lot better than I could've. Still, I really liked this scene.
> 
> (This is before the Ana announcement, just to give you an idea of how long ago this was.)

She can’t sleep.

She can’t sleep because with the window open it’s too loud and with the window closed it’s too hot. She can’t sleep because the bed is too soft but the floor is too hard.

She can’t sleep because it’s one of those in between times, not yet morning and not quite night anymore. Just like she is not quite Widowmaker anymore, but not yet- well, whoever it is that she’s becoming.

(Not Amelie. Never Amelie again.)

With a sigh, she goes to the door and turns the knob, surprised as always that it opens, that they let her have a room, that they don’t lock her in.

_Overwatch_ , she thinks, the word equal parts disgust and hope, and it’s too hard to untangle what’s old and what’s programmed and what’s new.

Thankfully, the question of where she should go is less complicated: only one member of Overwatch knows her treatment well enough to know what, if anything, can help her sleep without interfering with something else.

Or, maybe, only one person whose advice she can actually trust.

Angela lives very near to her own room, but when Widow knocks on her door, she is not answered by the blonde doctor. Instead Fareeha Amari stands at the door, eyes alert despite the hour, the hostility in her stance when she sees Widow undimmed by the sweatpants and t-shirt she’s wearing.

“Is Doctor Ziegler available?” Widow asks, knowing that her tone is stiff, stilted, watching the way that Fareeha bristles at the name.

“No,” Fareeha answers shortly, no explanation offered, no movement to unblock the door.

Widow waits in silence, knowing that silence makes people nervous, makes them want to talk just to fill the void. But she recognizes the careful cast to Fareeha’s expression, the steady blankness of a good soldier, and so eventually she sighs. “May I wait for her here?”

(Perhaps her own impatience is a good sign, she thinks. Perhaps Angela’s treatments are working.)

And Fareeha nods stiffly, steps back and holds the door open just marginally wider so that Widow can enter. As she slips inside, she tries not to survey her surroundings, noticing the way Fareeha’s eyes narrow as she does, but old habits die hard. And so she knows about the cracked open window by the bedside, notes the things that could be used as a weapon, has memorized the furniture layout in just one glance. An assassin needs to know how to get in and out quickly, after all.

But she’s not an assassin, not any more, and she hates the instinct and she hates the way that Fareeha is watching her. “You don’t trust me,” she says shortly, and Fareeha closes the hallway door but doesn’t lock it as she looks back at Widow, before stalking past her, farther into the room, as if to guard it from her.

“I’m surrounded by scientists and lone wolves,” she says, not without a hint of affection in the shape of her lips, but her eyes still hard. “But I’ve been trained to lead a team, to watch the whole battlefield and to put my people where they’ll do the most good - or the most harm.” She shifts her weight from one foot to the next, and Widow watches the way she consciously eases out of a fighting stance. “I think about how much time and effort we’ve spent on helping you, and I can’t help but wonder if you aren’t meant to be a distraction.”

Fareeha pauses, and when she continues her voice is hard. “I think about who I would target, if I was Talon. And you know who that would be?” Their eyes meet, and Widow has faced more powerful, more imposing people, but she finds she cannot look away from Fareeha. “Mercy. One of the most recognizable faces of Overwatch. One of the most beloved figures around the world, even after everything that happened. The genius doctor who keeps us all in the fight no matter what Talon throws at us.”

Another pause, as if waiting for a response, for an admission, but Widow again remains silent, and this time it’s Fareeha who breaks the silence. A bit of that mask slips, and for just a second Widow can see the nightmares in her eyes. “What a blow it would be,” Fareeha says softly, and Widow can hear how it’s the person and not the soldier speaking to her. “It would shake us to the core.” And then her chin raises, and the soldier is back. “And who do you spend the most time with? Who’s been overseeing every part of the process from the beginning? Whose door do you knock on in the middle of the night?”

Silence, one that Widow cannot bring herself to break.

“If you were sent here for her,” Fareeha says, and her voice is firm and her voice is sure, and her eyes hold nothing but promise, “just know that I will not let that happen.”

And perhaps Widow was mistaken before; perhaps she’s never met someone stronger than this. But she has never, in all her lives, been one who accepted being dictated to. “Or maybe I was sent for one of Overwatch’s leaders,” she says instead, her voice cool. “The woman everyone expects to be the next Strike Commander.”

“Maybe,” Fareeha repeats softly, but she doesn’t even flinch in response to the threat.

And finally Widow crosses her arms and glances away, trying to identify the tight feeling in her chest. “…I’m glad you don’t trust me,” she hears herself say, and is startled to realize that it’s true.

“Why?”

She can appreciate the simple neutrality of her tone, not the pleading of Lena’s, not the clinical detachment of Angela’s. Not the teasing of Sombra’s, or the rough interrogation of Reaper. The trouble is, she doesn’t know. She knows that Overwatch has been almost too nice, too welcoming. This is more the reaction she expected, and it puts her more at ease, puts her feet on more familiar ground as she dodges doubt and confronts suspicion.

But there’s so much that she doesn’t know. She barely remembers the time before Talon. She doesn’t really remember what happened with… Gerrard.

(And how that name hurts to remember.)

And that’s the crux of it, isn’t it? She doesn’t remember what happened then, so who’s to say it isn’t what’s happening now? That Talon didn’t plan this from the start, that this so called defection of her isn’t the game that Fareeha thinks it could be, that she isn’t some deep plant to once again rip at Overwatch’s heart. Before once again being dragged back to Talon, back to the drugs, back to the emptiness in her chest.

She’s glad someone’s watching.

“I don’t want to think I’ve trusted myself to a bunch of fools,” she finally says.

And the voice that answers her comes from behind her, and Widow thinks she must really be off her game if she missed the door opening.

“If we’re fools,” Angela says, stepping inside, “then it’s for all the right reasons.”

Widow scoffs at that, because what could possibly justify such foolishness, watching as Angela strides over to Fareeha. “You could stop her,” she says almost accusingly, because the Strike Commander comment wasn’t a ploy, wasn’t a lie. She doesn’t know exactly what Fareeha’s position here is, but she knows that when she speaks, the others listen.

But Fareeha laughs with an unexpected gentleness. “No,” she says simply, “I couldn’t.”

Widow watches the way they smile at each other, and her throat closes on Gerrard’s name. “You could regret this,” she warns them, looking at Angela now, her blue eyes dark with the memories, and Widow knows she’s thinking of him too.

“I won’t turn away someone who wants help,” Angela says quietly, and her stance is no less certain than Fareeha’s was, and so Widow thinks she understands why Fareeha answered her the way she did.

She notices how Fareeha’s hand goes to rest on the small of Angela’s back before she also speaks. “And we won’t let fear stop us from doing the right thing.”

“You _are_ fools.” Her tone is incredulous, scornful, but there’s something in the back of her mind that has seized onto their words, wonders if they could possibly be true, wonders if this has any chance of working.

And she tries to remember if this is what hope feels like.


End file.
